Yes Mother, I Hear You
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
The phone rang at
a quarter to six, it wasn’t even light outside. It was the home calling.
“It’s your
Mother. You need to come.”
“What happened?
Is she okay?”
“Well she had a
pretty bad spell, you need to come, we called the ambulance to take her to the
hospital.”
“Oh no. Is she
going to be all right? I’ll be there as fast as I can!”
“Well, don’t
speed or anything, but come on.”
I knew then she
was dead.
“My Mother-in-law was an Awesome Woman”, my brother’s wife
said at her grave site. And she was.
My first memory
of Mother was in the kitchen in our house in San Antonio. She was cooking and the
radio was playing some Texas Swing number and she was dancing to it. She was
always dancing and loved to dance. She taught us to do the Charleston when we got old
enough to follow the steps. But this day she was cooking supper for Daddy so he
could eat as soon as he got home from work.
She got up in
the morning and did the washing, hung the clothes out to dry, dusted and polished the furniture, swept out the
house, wet-mopped the kitchen floor, brought the clothes in and folded
them or sprinkled them with her little coke bottle sprinkler and rolled them up
to sit in the refrigerator while she fixed my lunch. After she fed me, she put
up the folded clothes. Then she would get out the iron and ironing board and
iron everything. She ironed sheets, pillowcases, daddy’s cotton underwear and
tee shirts, his shirts, his handkerchiefs, all my dresses and slips and underwear,
her dresses and aprons, everything except towels and wash cloths.
I remember
watching her, she would iron the gathered part of the apron first and then the
ties, on my dresses she would iron the collar first, then the gathered puff
sleeves, then the bodice, and then the skirt. The ties were last, of course. She taught me to iron by first letting me iron Daddy's handkerchiefs.
When she finished the ironing she put everything up, started dinner then got a bath and put on a clean dress
and apron, fixed her hair and put on some lipstick, and she was ready to finish
dinner.
When Daddy got
home she met him at the door, and then she'd put dinner on the table while he changed
clothes, and then we ate. After that, she’d bathe me and put my pajamas on, and after I went to bed she and Daddy had their time together. She’d make
coffee and they would have a cup and sit and talk over the day and whatever
else they discussed, but just spending time together was the important thing.
She did this
every day until we got grown and left home. This was her life and she loved it.
She was a happy woman. I know that sounds odd nowadays, but she did love it,
she took pride in how she cared for her husband and kids and kept the house
clean and cooked for us all, it was her full time job and she was good at it.
These days women
have jobs outside their home and their homemaking skills are not the number
one priority, this is not to say they don’t take care of their family and all,
but cooking and cleaning is not their full time job like it was for Mother.
She really worked
at it, and taught me so much I will never remember it all. But on occasion I
still hear her voice in my head, “Keep your house clean so your family will be
healthy”. “Don’t leave food out, it will spoil.” And more detailed
instructions, “Wash the glasses first, then the silverware, and then the
plates. Wash the sharp knives separately, and pay attention to what you are doing, don't put them in the sink, pick them up one at a time off the counter and wash, rinse and then put them on the drainboard. Wait til last to do the pots and pans, they are the dirtiest, and you
may need to run clean hot water for them after the dishes are done.” “Dust the
shelves and the furniture first, then clean the floor.”
Yes Mother, I
hear you.
And I do, all the
time. She is with me on a daily basis.
She was born in Oklahoma in 1923, the third baby girl and
the first one to live. There are two sisters buried in Arkansas, along with a
brother born almost 30 years later. He only lived for 6 hours.
She grew up an
only child, had cousins she considered sisters, but was always wishing for real
sisters and brothers. Her Daddy spoiled her rotten, but taught her she was just
as smart and just as good as any man, and she was. He owned a gas station on
the highway when she was young, and as a teen she would work there pumping gas
and washing windshields as well as checking oil and tires on the cars and trucks
that stopped there.
She always liked
to be with people, always talking and laughing. She was very popular in school,
although she was chubby and had bad teeth. These were the consequences of her
Daddy allowing her to eat too much candy, and all the while her Mom was fussing
about her weight and her teeth.
Her Daddy gave
her a car as soon as she turned 16 and she drove it into a ditch almost
immediately afterwards. Totaled the car, but she wasn’t badly hurt. Her Daddy
got her another car.
She played
basketball in high school, all the time her mother telling her she was too fat
to be wearing those little shorts and flapping all over the basketball court.
Her mother loved her, don’t misunderstand, however she wanted her to act like a
“lady” and behave, and mother was too outgoing to be a shrinking violet, so
there was always friction between the two. And her Daddy pampering her didn’t
help the back and forth between her and my grandmother at all.
She graduated
from high school and went to junior college, and majored in P.E. But she got
homesick and left there after the first semester.
Mother was at
odds then, my grandmother didn’t know what Mother was going to do with her life and
she worried. Mother had no idea what she was going to do either, but she was
not worried at all. My Mother took one day at a time.
A cousin of hers
was in the army and met a fellow he thought mother would like to write. He
was from a town south of where Mother was raised, and he was homesick but
couldn’t leave the army, of course. Just a farm boy, he had been to college for
two years, majored in Animal Husbandry and minored in Agriculture. Mother wrote
to him, and he wrote back gladly. Thus began their correspondence.
They wrote back
and forth for several months, getting to know each other through cards,
letters, and pictures. Of course when he got his first leave he went to see
her, she lived about 25 miles from the camp where he was stationed. His
family’s farm was too far away for him to go there on a weekend pass. They met,
and she was really impressed, she quickly fell in love with him. He was tall
and slim, had a head full of curly black hair, a good sense of humor, and was
decidedly, to her, a good catch. He
came to see her every time he could wrangle a pass. The second time they got
together she told him, “I will marry you, Jim Thompson.” And by golly a year
later she did.
His mother was
not happy, thought he’d married in haste, and thought Mother was too “citified”
for her boy. Mother lived in a town of 995 people! But his mother didn’t like
her from the start. Mother wore slacks, she wore lipstick, and she smoked.
Whewwwwww, what a “harlot.”
This made for a
strained relationship as you can imagine.
Mostly though,
the problem was because Mother was taking her Baby Boy away from her. Silly
woman, she shouldn’t have worried. But she did, and she pushed Mother away with
her constant snipping, and criticizing, she would get Mother back in the
kitchen ostensibly to help with the cooking, then dress her down about every
little thing. Mother spent too much money, she didn’t need a new car every
three or four years, she should have a garden and save on groceries, and so on.
Well she may have
told Daddy the same things and he just blew her off, or she may not have said
anything to him. However, she did dig at Mother pretty hard, so Mother finally
told Daddy about it. He said to not pay any attention to it, it was just Mammy.
Of course he would have felt different if it had been her Daddy dressing him
down, but I guess he didn’t think about that.
I don’t know how she managed, but she got through the
first months without a big argument, however she knew there would always be
trouble with his mother. For the time being she was happy, she had her husband
and he loved her and she loved him. Then his group was called up to go
overseas, the war in the Pacific. His mother had a fit, said if anything
happened to him what would she do, now that he was married who would get his
life insurance, and what would happen to Her, his Mother?
Mother, who never backed off in her life before, didn’t
back off then either. She said, ”If that’s all you care about TAKE THE
INSURANCE!”
But Daddy said, “No, you are my wife, it is in your name
and you will have it.” She said, ”I don’t need the money, I need my husband.
You just make sure you come home to me.”
He left, went to the Pacific Theater, and after the war he came back home. He was not quite as carefree, and he’d lost a little of his sense of humor but he did come home in one piece.
She was ecstatic to have him back. Now her real life could begin.
He got out of the service for a short time, lived in the
little town where she’d grown up. And he worked for her Dad at the service
station he owned. Mother soon saw that wasn’t what she wanted for him. ”I want
you to be your own man, not John Hill's Son-in-law. I think you should go back
in the service.” She held her own and he considered signing up again.
She wanted him to make his own life, and she meant to be
part of that. She was done with her little hometown, and wanted to be out in
the world and be part of the life they would make together.
And so he thought about it, and they talked it over, and it was decided. He re-joined the service, going in the
Air Force, and she started on her journey of life with him. She liked it more
than he did, she loved the moving from place to place, and she thrived on the
newness of a different town, different state, different military base, and
mostly different and new people. She made friends easily, and then made new
friends in whatever place he was sent next.
She was happy. She had me first, two years later she had
my sister, another two years passed and she had her first son, then three years later she had my baby brother. We were the children she always wanted, she had the husband she
wanted, she had the life she wanted.
She loved traveling, meeting new people, and living in new
places. When Daddy came home with transfer orders he was always just resigned
to the knowledge that his world was about to go into complete upheaval once
more, but Mother went into hyper drive. She immediately started cleaning closets
and sorting household pieces, she would get our house packed up in record time
and drive us kids crazy with her insistence on our getting our things together.
“Sort out your clothes, put the things you can’t wear or don’t want in those
boxes. Then pack up your toys and books in these boxes.”
Yes Mother, I hear you.
She went at this with a big smile on her face. She was in
her element, her “movin’ on” mode. She lived for this, the adventure and
excitement of seeing a new place and meeting new people.
She would get the house packed up in record time, the
movers would come get everything loaded and start out on their trip to our new
home, and then we were piled in the car with our suitcases and all, then
everyone was ready to begin another new adventure and off we’d go, on to the
next part of our life.
We lived in some great places, Alaska, Texas, Oklahoma,
Pennsylvania, and Alabama. We saw beautiful scenery, met all kinds of different
people, and we learned to speak in different accents (try talking to a south
Philly kid in a Texas accent, or to an Alabama kid in a Northern accent). We
tried different foods and learned little customs that were native to different
areas of our nation. Relocating from one part of the country to a completely
different part was a lesson in Geography and Social Studies in itself.
We did this my entire childhood. I liked it until I got to
be a teenager, then it began to wear on me. I made friends and really liked
those friends, and then after a year and a half or two years we’d be snatched
up and dragged off to a new place, new school, and new house where we would
start all over again. But Mother thrived on the change, always ready for new
people, new places, new houses to clean and fix up like she wanted. She would
make curtains and get little rugs to brighten up the base housing units we
lived in. And she would repaint the walls and trim in any house we rented or bought off base, and
make curtains and buy rugs and new pillows for the couch in those houses, too.She always had some sort of project that needed to be done, paste waxing the floors or refinishing cabinets. Once when we lived in Amarillo she sanded down all the cabinets and refinished them with linseed oil. I will never forget the smell, it was pleasant but strong,
Her life was her family, her husband and kids, and her
home, the cleaning and cooking and keeping our clothes washed and ironed, and
it isn’t a life that is looked upon as satisfying or even relevant now, but in
her day it was the best life there could possibly be for a woman.
She didn’t feel dissatisfied, she didn’t feel left out,
marginalized, set apart, or in any way degraded. Mother knew she was as good as
any woman, or any man for that matter. She was smart, a hard worker, and she
took pride in her work. When you keep a house and care for children and a
husband properly, it is real work, and it was as satisfying then as any other job
in the public workplace is now.
She cleaned, she cooked, she washed and ironed almost
every day, she ran the vacuum every day, and polished the furniture every day,
cleaned the bathrooms every day. Her house was fresh throughout, and it was her
proudest accomplishment in life. I know that sounds, in light of today’s school
of thought, like she was little more than a maid/servant. However things were
not that way back then.
She would have projects that needed doing every so often,
washing walls, cleaning windows, rearranging furniture, shampooing upholstery,
painting walls and trim inside the house, waxing the floors. These are things
she knew how to do and did then regularly. Other jobs she liked were done
outside, mowing the yard, and washing her car. She worked and worked hard, and
loved every minute of it.
When we were little and got sick, her cure for whatever we
had was to be bathed, put in fresh pajamas, laid in bed on clean sheets, and
made to rest. “You’ll feel better if you are clean and your bed is clean.” And
she was right. We did feel better. Even today, the first thing I want to do
when I get sick is change the sheets and get a nice hot shower, put on a fresh
gown and lie down on those clean sheets. I feel better almost immediately.
When we found out there was company coming to visit, she
went into a major cleaning frenzy. She was a ball of fire and she flew through the
house like a hurricane. Everything that wasn’t nailed down got washed,
scrubbed, and cleaned. Then everything else got the same treatment. She changed
the bed linens, washed the curtains, cleaned the windows, polished the
silverware, planned fabulously tasty meals, baked desserts, and made sure there
was coffee and iced tea enough for everyone.
She made everything as clean and comfortable as was
humanly possible and she loved having company so we had overnight visitors
often. She was the ultimate hostess, her guests’ comfort and enjoyment was of
paramount importance to her. She was unstoppable.
I learned everything I know about keeping house from her.
And when I took a shortcut or let something slide I would hear her voice in my
head. ”That is not the way to do that, you know better…”
Yes, Mother. I hear you.
When we were growing up, her sense of fun was so
prevalent. Our Birthdays and Christmases were special days to be highly
celebrated. A birthday meant we got to choose what we wanted for Birthday
Dinner. It meant a homemade cake she decorated and served with ice cream and
presents she wrapped herself. There were always candles on our cake to be lit
and blown out while everyone sang Happy Birthday. It was our special day and we
were treated like royalty.
Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Easter were major productions
of decorations, presents, fabulous foods, having friends come join us sometimes
and sometimes it was just us, but there were six in our family, so it was a
party whether anyone else was in attendance or not. These occasions were her
signature extravaganzas. She lived for the holidays, and taught us to love
them.
My brother’s wife Leslie was surprised on her first
birthday after they married when Mother said in a lilting sing-song voice, ”And
just What would the Birthday Girl like for her Birthday Dinner?”
Leslie’s family were not like we were. Oh they celebrate
birthdays and enjoy them, like all families do, but in our family these
celebrations took on a decidedly Cecil B deMille aspect that was missing in
normal family celebrations. She was surprised, yes. But it didn’t take her long
to learn to enjoy it, all the attention and focus was on the Birthday Girl, and
her every wish was Mother’s command.
Christmas was always a months-long production starring
shopping, gift-wrapping, food buying, meal planning, holiday baking of cakes and pies,
and elaborate meal preparations. All of these culinary efforts would have been
on par with every good restaurant meal I have ever sampled. Mother loved it and
lived for it. She had her family together and all was well in her world.
She loved life in general and her own life in particular.
Our lives changed as time passed. We grew up, left home,
got married, had our own families, but Mother was still a big part of our
lives. She was a major force of Nature, and a huge influence on us. I found
myself doing things the same way she did. When I had company coming to visit I
cleaned and cooked and worked like a Trojan for days before their arrival. When
I was doing any chore in the house I would hear her instruction voice in my
head, “iron the collar first, then the shoulders of the dress, the sleeves like
this. Iron the body of the blouse like this, lapels first, then down the front
doing the underside of the buttons and buttonholes first, being careful to iron
around the buttons for a nice finished look.”
Yes Mother, I hear you.
In her middle age years, things began to change. She was
diagnosed with arthritis, both osteo-arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Her
world began to crumble. She began being unable to do all she was used to doing.
This didn’t happen overnight of course, but it was relentlessly progressive.
She was not happy with this development, lived in constant
pain, and was unable to do all the things she lived to do. Slowly but steadily
she became less and less able, and this weighed on her mind heavily. She began
to feel useless, her reason to live and breathe was being taken away from her
and she resented and despised it, while at the same time pitied herself
for the loss.
I had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia myself, and I missed my old life too! I wanted to do things that I
used to enjoy also. I knew how she felt.
She talked about this often, how useless and unneeded she
felt. She would say, “I got the most pleasure out of doing what I did for you
all. It was my pride and joy to see you kids and your Dad happy and taken care
of, and to see my house clean and shining, that was my Life, and I loved doing
those things for you all, and now I can’t anymore.”
Finally one day I told her, “Mother, your value is not
what you do, it is who you are, and whether you can clean house and cut the
grass or not has no bearing on your worth as a person and certainly doesn’t
affect your worth to us as a person, our mother, our teacher and our best
friend. You are the same person now that you always were to us.”
I told her then and repeated it several more times over
the years, “You are our Mother, we don’t care whether you can
run a vacuum cleaner or work the lawnmower, or paint the walls, or not. We love
you. Not what you do. Don’t misunderstand, you made our lives so wonderful by doing all the things you Did for us. But the important thing about that
was that you wanted to do them. Your heart was in charge, you did those things
because you loved us, and it is the love that sustained us, not the clean
sheets or the special foods or the Christmas presents. We enjoyed all those
things, we enjoyed them very much, they were important to us, you must know
that, but it was the love you had for us that was the source of our enjoyment and
the reason we loved you back, and that will never change. Think about this,
have your feelings for us changed? Do you love us less now that you are ill and
unable to do all those things you did for us before?”
“Why no, of course not, don’t be silly!”
“Well, why would you think our feelings for you would
change now?”
“I don’t know, I just miss doing all those things. I got
such pleasure from that, you know I did.”
“But Mother, you still do for us, you are here for us. You
still love us, and that is what we need from you.”
Daddy got sick, fast growing brain cancer, and after he
died I was afraid she’d crumble. I should have known better. She rallied,
became more self reliant, and she lived by herself for a year. Then she decided
to go to an assisted living place. She refused to live with us. Said she wanted
us to visit her, but she wanted other people to take care of her. I thought
that’s just not right, we should care for her. But when I thought more about
it, this was exactly what I should have expected. She needed care, but she
wanted to keep that from us. She wanted things to stay the way they always
were, the dynamic of mother and child to continue with her being “mother”, with
me being “child”, and if I took care of her that dynamic would change. The idea
of that was intolerable to her.
She lived in assisted living residences for as long as she
could hold out. She forced herself to try to keep the physical standards
required to qualify for residence, but it became increasingly difficult. I saw her
as often as possible, and it became apparent she could no longer manage the
telephone, she couldn’t hear well, and couldn’t work the buttons, “These things
just don’t do right, I think I need a new phone.” She finally gave up her car. She had stopped driving it over a
year before, but would get “the girls” at the home to take her places.
I would get her and we’d go to lunch together somewhere
she liked, and she would ask me if I was embarrassed by the way she ate. She
had trouble holding her fork and spoon. Her poor little hands were so crippled,
bent and destroyed by arthritis, and she was self-conscious. She said she knew
she looked awful, and didn’t want anyone to stare so we needed to sit in a back
corner.
I knew not to even think about picking up her fork and
feeding her myself. She would have curled up and died right then and there.
So I said, ”Mother, I don’t care what these strangers
think! They know nothing about you or me. And don’t you bother to care either.
When they come over here and pick up our check to pay it, then we’ll worry
about what they think of us.” She laughed. And we ate our lunch and enjoyed it.
It was harder and harder for her to get out though, and I
could see she was struggling. One day out of the blue she said, “I think it’s
time for me to move to a nursing home. I’m tired.”
“Well, if you think that’s what you need, I’ll help you
find one.” It hurt my heart, but I knew she was tired and I knew why.
I told her she’d fought long and hard to keep up her front
and I knew what it was costing her. And I said it was OK, it was time for her
to rest and let others do for her.
We went to look at a few places, and she decided on one
that was new and not far from the assisted living home, so she signed up and
moved into that one. She seemed happy with the decision.
She was becoming less and less able to move, she couldn’t
walk anymore, and didn’t even want to get into the wheelchair. The staff would
get her up and put her in the chair, take her to the dining room or take her to
the television room, but she became less and less interested. She slept more
and more, and began to be vague and forgetful. She had worn herself out putting
on a good face and keeping up the front, and I could see it was time.
One of the last visits I made I found
her sleeping in her wheelchair in the television room. When I spoke to her she
roused up and said, “Well what am I doing in Here?” I told her I didn’t know.
“Don’t you remember coming in there to maybe watch a TV show?” She said, “No, I
don’t want to be here but I guess they just put me where they want to. They
always put all of us old people wherever they like, nobody cares if we want to
be there or not.” I asked her if she wanted to stay or go to her room, and she
said “Take me to my room, I want to lay down, I want them to leave me alone, I
don’t know why they brought me in here to start with, they know I don’t like
daytime TV, it’s all Crap!”
The last time I saw her was Monday November 8, 2004. When I got to her room she was asleep. She had been sick and I let her sleep, I felt like she needed the rest. I waited about an hour, and talked to the nurses at the desk outside of her room awhile, asked them how she was doing. They said "Not so well, but sometimes they bounce back and you can't ever tell." I said, " I think she is on her way out, she is just tired and it is a struggle for her. "
I went back to her room but decided to leave her a note and go on home. When I put the note on her chest she roused up and said, "How long have you been here?"
I told her I'd been there awhile but had let her sleep, and not to worry I would be back Thursday and we could talk then. She was disappointed, but smiled and said "Okay, be careful driving and I love you."
She didn't make it to Thursday, but the last thing she said to me was "I love you."
Yes Mother, I hear you.
THE END
